뉴스레터

The reason people from Joseon came to settle down in Edo Japan can be traced back to piroin (被虜人), the captives the Japanese army took from Joseon during the Imjin War of 1592-1598. Piroin is a term that was originally used in Joseon records and is now being used in Korean and Japanese academia as a term that refers to "Joseon civilian war captives the Japanese army abducted during the Imjin War."

Piroin from the Imjin War

In the 1990s, some Japanese scholars would describe piroin as "Joseon people who arrived in Japan during early Joseon." However, in Japanese academia, especially in the field of research on ancient history, the expression "those who arrived" meant groups of people who arrived in Japan of their own accord, so labeling piroin who resulted from the Imjin War as "those who arrived in the modern times" seems inappropriate.

The most pioneering among the studies previously done on piroin would be the study about a group of Joseon potters (陶工) who, according to the Japanese government's habitation policy, lived in the Satsuma Domain (薩摩藩), today's Naeshirogawa of Kagoshima Prefecture. Later studies on what Tongshinsa, or Joseon envoys sent to Japan, did to repatriate piroin came to mention Joseon people who settled down in modern Japanese society. More recently, there have been research findings identifying the forms in which such Joseon people existed in Japanese society. Yet, most of the studies done so far have only managed to introduce individual cases.

Many Japanese feudal lords known as daimyō who participated in the invasion of Joseon were from the western parts of Japan such as Kyushu (九州), Chūgoku (中國), and Shikoku (四國). So, a majority of war captives were taken to those areas compared to others, which is why the same areas have been suspected to be where Joseon captives who chose to collectively settle down in Japan ended up. In fact, villages where Joseon people lived in western Japan used to exist under names such as "Tojin-machi" (唐人町) or "Korai-machi" (高麗町). This gives rise to the question of what policies the authorities of each domain or the Bakufu assumed to govern residents from Joseon and what the social status of such residents had been in Japan.

Joseon People Trafficked Abroad

The Japanese academia's general take on foreigners who settled down in modern Japan is that "as long as they were not Christians and assimilated themselves into the customs and practices of Japan, the Edo bafuku basically did not bring their race or national origin into question." Unlike some potters who were forced to remain in their line of work, common Joseon people must to have had different individual reasons that led them to live in groups or form unique emigrant settlements.

While some Joseon people were transported by Japanese troops to the respective domain of each daimyō, others were abducted or purchased by Japanese merchants for the purpose of human trafficking. Many of the Japanese merchants that followed the Japanese army to Joseon during the Imjin War had been involved in human trafficking. In some cases, the Japanese army would sell Joseon captives to such merchants, who would then re-sell such captives to Portuguese merchants in exchange for firelocks (鳥銃) or white threads (白絲). Portuguese merchants thereafter re-sold Joseon people in other parts of Asia or Portuguese colonies. So, such trade much resembled the system of slave hunting.

In 1983, a seventeenth century painting titled "Man in Korean Costume" by the famous Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens was sold for a record 324 thousand British pounds (or 660 million Korean won) at the Christie's auction house in London. Meanwhile, in his travelogue "Ragionamenti di un viaggio intorno al mondo" about his trips to the Philippines, Japan, and India, the Italian merchant Francesco Carletti based in Firenze wrote that "The Japanese army captured many men and women from Korea and sold them at bargain prices, so I purchased five and then released them after bringing them over to Goa in India. I brought one back to Firenze and he is now living in Rome under the name Antonio."

Of course, there is no telling whether the person depicted in Rubens’ painting is the Korean named Antonio who Carletti purchased from the Japanese. Only from the fact that the painting was based on someone from Joseon at a time when the kingdom had no trading or diplomatic relations with any European country in the seventeenth century implies that people from Joseon were in fact sold abroad to areas including Europe by the hands of the Japanese.

Piroin’s Choice to Stay or Return

Because piroin were sold as slaves not only domestically in Japan, but re-sold overseas to Manila, Macao, India, and other European locations, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many of them were taken away from Joseon. Piroin ended up scattering widely across Japan from the Tōhoku region down to Okinawa, making it impossible to tally the exact total of piroin, but the Japanese roughly estimates the number to have been tens of thousands whereas Koreans believe it was more than one hundred thousand. Out of those estimated totals, the number of piroin repatriated to Joseon has been suggested to be anywhere between 6,100 and more than 7,500, meaning that tens of thousands from Joseon remained in Japan after having been brought there.

After the Imjin War ended, there were mainly three ways for piroin to return to their homeland: take advantage of the Tsushima Domain’s efforts to re-establish diplomatic relations with Joseon, procure means of their own to return, or accompany the envoys visiting Japan on their way back to Joseon. Specific cases of repatriation, many of which took place within the first ten years or so, have been confirmed of occurring over a span of nearly half a century from 1599 and throughout the visits by Joseon envoys in 1607, 1617, 1624, 1636, and 1643. Once repatriation began, many people at first wished to return to their homeland, so a total of 1,418 men and women returned to Joseon through the envoy visit in 1607. However, the number of repatriates gradually dwindled thereafter. Only 14 returned with the envoys that visited Japan in 1643, practically making the trip the end of piroin repatriation. Near the end of this process, more people would initially express their wish to return only to change their mind at the last minute or turn down invitations to return.

Reasons for choosing not to return varied. After their stay in Japan became prolonged, more people began to marry, form families of their own, and secure stable sources of income. People who were taken away to Japan in their youth would hardly have any memory left of their home town or family back in Joseon, which would have made it seem challenging for them to make a fresh start after returning to Joseon. So, the tendency to choose to settle down in Japan grew stronger over time. Moreover, the way the Joseon government treated piroin once they returned has also been pointed out as a reason for them not to go back. Some studies have revealed that there were cases where people tried to interfere with their fellow piroin’s repatriation, telling them there was no benefit whatsoever in returning to their homeland. There has even been a study that focused specifically on how the Joseon government responded to repatriated piroin. The study found that it was doubtful as to whether the initial promise was kept on exonerating piroin from the crimes of becoming a captive and of not having been able to perform the duties of loyalty, filial piety, and chastity during their absence. There was also a case in which the envoys abandoned the piroin they brought back upon their arrival somewhere around Busan, rendering it necessary to perform a more in-depth review of the repatriation system and to trace in further detail the whereabouts of piroin after their return to Joseon.

Profiles of Piroin

How old were piroins and what was the male to female ratio among them? Most of them were male or female either under age, young adults or older. This seems to have been because people who fit that profile tended to have greater and longer value as a source of labor. In the Kaga Domain (now Ishikawa Prefecture), although not part of western Japan, at least five of out the thirteen who appeared to be piroin from Joseon had been under the age of ten. The reason children took up a higher percentage among piroins must have been because they weren't physically strong enough to rebel, less likely to escape, and could be taken advantage of as labor or slaves with craft skills over an extended period of time if trained well enough. As for females, they would have been relatively easier to capture and transport than males and would have mainly been used as slaves to support household labor in Japan.

In terms of the areas where piroins were taken from, a majority of them were either from the provinces of Gyeongsang or Jeolla. Those were the areas where the Japanese army or merchants primarily took Joseon people as captives. After taking over Joseon's capital Hanseong, the Japanese army preyed on those who did not participate in battling them, such as the gentry or women, and especially women of the gentry, according to records of diplomatic missions called sahaengnok (使行錄). Once taken to Japan, they were at first trafficked as lifelong servants or nannies, but over time, they became independent by turning themselves into Buddhist monks, doctors, Confucian scholars, merchants, subordinates or servants of a daimyo, or potters. So, although most of the Joseon people who were dragged over to Japan as slaves were kept under surveillance by their Japanese masters, there were still plenty of cases where they became freed from their status as slaves relatively early on.

It has been pointed out that the reason people from Joseon were able to pursue independent paths in diverse positions within the Japanese society has to do with the concept of slavery at the time in that society. Human trafficking in Japan was done in the form of handing over the permanent or temporary ownership of a body, which meant that body would be entering a commitment to serve the society or country. The Japanese therefore treated their slaves as if they were their own children and the working class in some cases adopted them or married them off with their own children or relatives. Also, ownership of whatever a slave earned, including the right to freely dispose of it, belonged to that slave. These allowed people from Joseon access to opportunities to gain independence by either marrying a Japanese or becoming adopted by one. There were many cases in which a Joseon woman became the wife or maid of a daimyo like Toyotomi (豊臣) or Tokugawa (德川), or those of samurai warriors such as a hatamoto (旗本) or hanshi (藩士).

Remaining Challenges for Piroin Research

Based on numerous cases confirming that people from Joseon were put to work in areas that required more professional skills instead of farming, some suggest that it is highly likely for Joseon piroins in the same line of work to have lived in groups in urban environments such as Jōkamachi (城下町). Even in cases where they were put into farming as substitute workers, some claim that they only functioned as temporary or supplementary labor that hadn't been organized as part of the system that allocated forced labor to villages. That claim, however, is based on the fact that there has been no historical source yet mentioning that the many people taken away from Joseon to Japan were forced to work in a daimyo’s domain. Others claim that Japanese daimyos kidnapped people from Joseon to reinforce their own military forces.

Apart from special cases like the village of Joseon people in the Satsuma Domain, the general view is that settlements where Joseon people lived in groups were gradually assimilated into the Japanese society over time until it became difficult to detect characteristics of their homeland. To overcome the above limitations to piroin research, it will be necessary to more closely examine sources mentioning how domains where Joseon people lived were governed so as to track what policies each domain’s authorities applied toward them.